The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Does 'Less Lethal" Change Use of Force?

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

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Welcome back to Matterfacts Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at mwfpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Rabelais, and my co-host Andrew Bobo is on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Welcome back to Matterfacts Podcast. It's kind of late in the evening on a Wednesday and you know, sometimes when you have disparate

schedules you have to try to ram together between myself and Mr. Bobo and Trek who is joining us from a secret location not to be disclosed to the general public. Tatooine. It's not Hot Planet, it's Tatooine. It probably looks like Tatooine, honestly.

But no, we had to bring Trek in here to settle an argument because I put up a poll on Instagram and Trek, the internet is deadlocked over which me or Andrew is more likely to engage in some recreational welding on a Komatsu bulldozer. Oh, it's you. 100%. Yeah. I had to explain Killdozer to my wife. She voted in the poll. She voted for Andrew, by the way. Which, I think we need marriage counseling now.

She voted for him, but had no earthly idea what Killdozer was, who Marvin Hemeyer was. The reference went straight over her head and halfway through me explaining to her she's just shaking her head like this is the man i married so trek it's been a hot minute uh since uh we've had you on how you been it has been a while you guys been cheating out with me with all these other guests and i'm just i just can't even i know things are things are good uh we're out in once again in the desert of arizona a little bit farther north because of everything that's going on down there uh from

years past but uh yeah we're we just got back from a excursion out in the desert today and some clay hills looking for some zeolite crystals on the atv and the dirt bike and got back just enough time to see you guys so things are good that's awesome yeah i've been keeping track of your shenanigans down there and you got uh you got the missus there a uh a nifty little uh toy to play on and then you even got yourself uh something yeah it's the junior version of the delta force bike is what i tell myself so So I got Allison, picked up Allison. She wanted a four-wheeler ATV and I picked up a Honda CRF 125 big wheel and had it outfitted for

adult suspension. And that way when it falls, when I, needless to say, will wipe out, I can pick the bike up off myself. And I've already spray painted it od green and yeah it's uh it's a lot of fun so i've been tearing around the desert and exploring places that we haven't been in years past so it's it's a good time well that's yeah that sounds cool yeah it's cracked me up and you had it and um i like the uh i think she posted it was an instagram versus reality and it was like you writing or something. And then I think reality was like you, like it's Stalin or something.

I don't remember now, but, um, Oh yeah. She, she started filming for whatever it was. And I was like, this is where I'm going to fall over or whatever.

And so the first thing was that I just stopped. So the kill switch was still on. And then of course, uh, I was in soft sand and instead of trying to get it going in first gear, I was having good success in second gear. But you really got to give it gas. And so, of course, on video, couldn't get it started because the kill switch is on. And I stalled it starting in second gear.

And just that's the way real life actually happens. Yeah, well, it's I mean, it's crazy because you guys took off and we've and we had a good cold snap there for a few weeks, but it's actually been 40. I was in shorts today. It was 36 out, I believe, and a lot of rain. We've had a ton of rain, which you said that you guys are getting some rain here shortly. Yeah, we're getting ready to have, with the broadcasting, forecasting is a week of rain and possibly up to a quarter to a half inch tomorrow, which is incredible for out here.

I mean, that's when you hear about monsoons and flash floods and roads disappearing and rivers being created instantaneously. That's kind of what everybody here in the park with us. We're all battening things down and getting ready for some wet weather. But, yeah, it's funny when you say short weather weather it's a little bit different than short weather here but yeah as a michigander uh i totally get that when it gets up to above freezing everybody's like let's roll the windows down let's go to the beach yeah i had uh i had uh today i had shorts on and uh the my my window half down in my truck. There you go. It wasn't too bad.

Just an FYI, if my wife ever happens to be riding in a car with either one of y'all and you try to roll the window down when it's 40, she's going to skin you and wear you like a fur coat. Challenge accepted. Don't play games with that angry little Sicilian, bro. She is warm natured. At least you know that if you pissed her off, she's not going to know what a killdozer is.

So, I mean, you have at least that benefit right now. Yeah, unfortunately, she knows what a wooden spoon is, and those are lethal. She'll throw it at you. So, brought you on for two reasons, really. One reason is we got talking about less lethal uh because and i'm gonna throw this up uh obviously trek you can't see it but uh i got the less lethal 12 gauge rounds that basically sparked our conversation yeah and um so we'll get we'll get into that shortly uh less lethal basically the uh i mean

we can talk about kind of like the definition of less lethal and the myths, I think. You know, we were talking about like the myths and people, their idea of, hey, this is less lethal. I'm going to carry it or I'm going to use it. If somebody just steps foot on my property, I'm going to do whatever. And there's some falsehoods to that. But before we kick that off, I want to touch on, uh, the, uh, Brian Terry foundation. Um, you were recently at SHOT Show for a hot second, uh, cause you are on the board for Brian Terry foundation.

Uh, and so, yeah, just kind of tell us a little bit about it. I mean, I know some, some people, if they don't know what it is, uh, please get your head out of the sand, um, out from under a rock and research who Brian Terry was and what happened to him and the atrocities that our federal government did that caused his. Continue to do. And continue to do that caused his death. So if it's something that I mean, if you're I mean, if it's something that you really want to get ticked off about, I mean, this is a story. This is something that will make you angry at the federal government and for the ATF when they're trying to strip our rights away. But they go ahead and just free will, you know, really nearly just go across the border and do what they want. But

anyway, before I go too off the edge here, yeah, give us a rundown on the Brian Terry Foundation and kind of like the deal that you're running with Spectacle Lake and stuff like that. Yeah, I appreciate it. So Brian Terry, a Border Patrol agent, he served on the elite BORTAC team, which is their special operations team. You probably, if you've been, if people out there paid attention with the Evaldi Evaldi school shooting, it was Bortak that actually made entrance into that situation and took care of neutralize the the threat to the students and staff. But Brian Terry was on a mission outside the desert of Rio Rico, Arizona, on 15 December of 2010. His team was armed with we're going to talk less lethal they had some less

lethal uh weapons and of course their sidearms and their their job was to intercede and stop some uh what is known as a cartel rip crew rip crew is someone that comes across looking for other cartel mules and then basically conduct arm robbery and steal their money cash and weapons whatever it is they're trying to elicitly bring into the country. Well, during this nighttime encounter, Brian's team basically walked into a firefight with this cartel rib crew and Brian suffered a mortal injury from a weapon that at the time not many people had heard about, but it was a weapon from the infamous Operation Fast and Furious, meaning it was a weapon from the infamous operation fast and furious meaning it was a weapon that the united states government whether solely to demonize the

rights protected under the second amendment to stack statistics in the favor of gun confiscation or demonizing gun ownership that allowed uh to this date we still don't know how many but but tens of thousands of weapons uh into the hands hands of Mexican drug cartels through straw purchases and all sorts of other illegal shenanigans. And so the Brian Terry Foundation was founded by his family to get answers and, of course, get justice for what happened to Brian Terry in the desert out there. Because Brian Terry's house was raided by our own government afterwards. He was a federal agent, killed in the line of duty. They raided his house. They took all of his electronic devices.

His family still has not gotten answers about why they decided to wipe a lot of his devices and things along those lines. John Dotson, the whistleblower from the ATF that was made famous on 60 Minutes, basically lots and lots of people in our government were responsible, not just the people in the Mexican drug cartels, but many high ranking members of our own government were responsible for this happening and directly and indirectly responsible for Brian Terry's murder. And frankly and scarily, the murder of hundreds, not thousands, of Americans, Mexican nationals, and even to the fact that weapons from Operation Fast and Furious have been seen overseas in Europe and other places.

So it's a very wide, encompassing, horrible situation that to this date, because the Brian Terry Foundation and a foundation that's run 100% on volunteers, volunteerism and donations from people that care to this day, we have brought to justice all of the members of the Mexican cartel rip crew that were directly responsible for Brian Terry's murder. They are now all serving very long sentences in American prisons. But one thing that we can't stop is that the people that were responsible for it on our side of the fence, they've been promoted, they've been moved, but they walk free and they're out there. I mean, Eric Holder, for God's sakes, was held in contempt of Congress. Nothing was ever

done to him. He was directly responsible for uh for this so the long story short uh starting back in 2014 i became involved with the brian terry foundation by doing what was known as the trex trek it was a 2 000 mile bike ride from flat rock michigan where brian terry was born and raised to the brian a terry border patrol station in bisbee arizona um and that was to raise money for the b Terry Foundation. And during that ride, it was 25 days on the road, 60 to 120 miles a day on a bicycle, solo and supported. We brought in about $30,000 in donations, which was awesome.

And then fresh off the bike seat with my rear end still hurting, I went to SHOT Show that year. And with the help of my friends at ATI and Dark Angel Medical, we rented a suite at the Venetian, and it started inviting people. I made passes on my home printer and laminator, and it just turned into a fun party. But we tried very last minute what was called the Danger Zone Auction, and people and companies in the firearms industry, which are very generous people, and all about law and order and just being responsibly armed citizens. They started kicking in all these one-off products. And we had this very impromptu auction. And that night in 2014 or

2015, as it was, we raised another $30,000. And I remember, you know, tears in my eyes telling all these people in this crowded hotel room after chanting USA at the top of our lungs, you know, how awesome it was in a matter of hours, we just raised another $30,000 to the Brian Terry Foundation. And if you guys had told me we could have done this in one night, I wouldn't have had to ride across the country on a bike to do it. But I'm very proud to say that since then, the Danger Zone auctions have brought in over $250,000 to the Brian Terry Foundation. The problem that we're finding right now, of course, the economy and things like that, is that there's still lots of missions that the Brian Terry Foundation is all about. One of the biggest ones, of course, getting answers and justice for questions that are still not answered and people that are still responsible have not been

brought to justice. There are law enforcement officers in the Border Patrol that are being hurt, injured, and God forbid they lose their life serving their country. The Brian Terry Foundation gives money to the families of those fallen Border Patrol agents. And then, of course, we have scholarships for young people that are trying to get careers in law enforcement following Brian's legacy. legacy. So with everything going on down at the border right now, it's very easy for a story of one agent, no matter how well known at the time, to start to slide into the cracks with just the awful tragedy that is occurring on our southern border. And so I had the opportunity to go to SHOT Show. It was very impromptu. I've got a product that I brought to market. Looks like it's going to be picked up by a big company. I'm excited to share that news, hopefully publicly in a little bit.

But I also wore another hat and went there as a member of the Brian Terry Foundation Board of Directors. And so we were just trying to spread the word and get people involved. We didn't do a danger zone auction this year, but we did raise a little bit of money. But we did raise a little bit of money. And as part of that, in the long-winded response to your question, is that I was very proud to be able to sell Spectacle Lake Outdoor Club. It was the outdoor club and range that I had purchased. I created a private social club, sold shares, and we were able to save Spectacle Lake Outdoor Club

that is now a member-owned club in Albion, Michigan. And the board of directors have been very, very generous. They have just put up 10 shares. Basically, you become an owner, part owner of the club. You are a lifetime member. They put up 10 shares at $500 under the current share price. That's $3,000 a share. It's a lifetime membership where $2,000 of that goes to the Brian Terry Foundation,

and $1,000 goes to make improvements to the club. Unfortunately, as of right now, we've got till 7th February. We haven't sold a single one. And I really just need help getting the word out there. And hopefully there's somebody that likes to do a lot of shooting and boating and sitting around a campfire and love to be a member of a club where there's only 200 shares. And that's just something that we're trying to do to raise money to keep this foundation going. Because even though the members of the board do not take a paycheck at all, not a single dime goes to them, with scholarships, with attorney's fees, with helping out border patrol agents and their families in need, with everything going on right now, it's very quick and it can be very quick to empty a bank account.

So if anybody out there is not interested necessarily in buying a share, they can go to honorbryanterry.com. The upper right hand corner is a donate button. And even as I've told people, I've spent so much money on silly things, silly guns, boxes of ammo, five dollar cup of coffee. If you just go and give up one five dollar cup of coffee and make a $5 donation, that money goes and gets used in a really great mission. If you got a little bit more, that's awesome. But the way I looked at it when I did my bike ride is that if I could get 5,000 people to donate $20 bill, that foundation would have been far better off than it ever would have been. And if we can have that mindset where all of us kick in a little bit, and I know things are

tight, we can do a lot of good and just like the firearms policy coalition and a lot of the other organizations out there that do the fighting when we don't have the time, uh, this is a mission that I am dedicated to. And, uh, and hopefully we can carry on and keep the missions of the Brian Terry foundation operating for many, many years. So I appreciate you guys allowing this platform to be used to help the foundation. So thank you. Yeah. And that's the thing is I just want to throw it out there to people too. It doesn't take long at all. I mean, I don't want to like try to guilt or, you know, throw anything out on anybody, but I mean, I donated and it took me, I mean, it's like

nine and five minutes. It actually took me, I think maybe two and a half because I forgot to put in the, uh, Michigan in the, in the state. I left that blank and then it kicked it back to me and said, uh, Hey, you're stupid. Uh, fill this out. And so it actually took me an extra like 30 seconds to do that. Uh, but basically, I mean, I have it up on the screen if you're, if anybody's watching, uh, the live, uh, but if you're not, uh, basically at Brian, uh, Brian Terry foundation. Yes. Honor Brian Terry. Sorry HonorBrianTerry.com, and then basically that comes up.

You have make a donation in orange, and you have donate at the very top. Basically, you go here. You fill out this form. You can do a customized donation, or you can just pick one of their pre-filled out amounts, fill out the information and, uh, hit submit. And I mean, it's that easy. So it's, it's a great cause. So, uh, hopefully we can, uh, drum up some money for you guys. I mean, it's harder to file your taxes and nowhere near satisfying. Right. But, uh, but yeah, no, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's great to have you on and talking about this and, um, it's something that needs to be reminded every once in a while of everybody on his story. And then basically, I mean, I hope anybody listening to this knows how crooked the government is.

But maybe this is just something that it'll kind of help cement that idea in the brains. But, you know, I appreciate it. And it is exhausting. And I'm sure we're going to talk about it. We always go off on some tangents. It is exhausting, especially with what's going on in the world right now in our in our country to try to focus on one issue, because there are so many things that require a responsible citizen's attention. This is an organization, just like many others, that will they'll take the funds that are so graciously donated.

will, they'll take the funds that are so graciously donated. And then you don't have to worry about the fact that they're going to go take care of what you needed those, that money to do. And so, you know, just like the Brian Terry foundation, the firearms policy coalition, lots of great things out there that are fighting the fight every day. So you can just try not to go insane with everything else that's going on in the world. Yeah, no, exactly. Yeah. So no, hopefully, hopefully uh i'm hoping

it'd be cool if we could uh help out a little bit but uh but on to onto the topic here less lethal uh so uh less lethal um you and i you you shot me a text uh with the picture of this from it looked like it was in was was it in Recoil? It looked like, oh, Tactical. It was Tactical Life Magazine is what it was. Tactical Life Magazine. Yeah, and it was kinetic by a company that it's, it says kinetic on it, less lethal. I mean, and they're marketing this thing hard to less lethal.

And that kind of sparked the conversation between you and I over text about just the falsehoods of less lethal and that kind of sparked the conversation between you and i over text about the just the the falsehoods of less lethal and that what people some people might not know or they might not understand that less lethal if you bring it out and you and you use it in the wrong in the wrong way you could still get in some serious trouble no absolutely and and it's been so long since we've had a good you know the the aubrey trial the rittenhouse trial and get to talk use of force and constitutionality of what we can and what we cannot do but we really have never gone down the uh the rabbit hole of of less lethal and and i am uh you know it's funny we talk about this i'm a huge proponent of less than lethal technologies i uh i had graduated from the penn state less than lethal technologies course uh been hit with oc pepper spray over 20 times ridden lightning uh constantly

trying to keep my eyes on that's what shots show you really see some uh great products coming out you see some train wrecks i mean one, one of them, I remember one year, was an under-barrel-mounted pepper spray dispenser, and it was under-barrel of an M16. So don't mind me pointing the lethal weapon at you. I'm going to hopefully hit the right button and not shoot you in the face with a live round. But there are great technologies coming out in Burna,

and we started the conversation about these kinetic 12 gauge rounds that are making the, they look amazing. The marketing department. They look cool. I kind of want it just because it looks like us. It looks like one of those old Nerf footballs. They look like a high velocity, little Nerf football. And I saw that.

And the problem was my blood turned cold after very quickly doing just a little bit more research, going to their website and seeing what I believe was over 10 pages of comments of people that had purchased them and that were making comments like now my wife can feel confident about defending the home when I am not there. And there's right things in that statement and very wrong things in that statement. And as I went through, I started to realize that stuff that I teach in our course called When a gun is not an option, I built that class because there were two statements that I read when I first got out of the service on a forum called Michigan gun owners, which is, uh, uh, there's sometimes be very valuable information, but like most of the internet,

there's a lot of really bad information that gets put on these online forums. And the two statements that I remember was I don't carry a pepper spray because I don't have a vagina. That was the one statement. And the other one was, I don't worry about hand-to-hand defense because if someone tries to punch me, I'm going to shoot them in the face with my J-frame. And I built that class because of those two statements of how we've all heard something very similar to those and how bad people that make statements like that it's not that they have bad intentions they are grossly ignorant but they are unconscious to their own ignorance when it comes to less than lethal technologies and constitutional use of force and so just like someone

and I'm someone that makes a living training people in firearms and use of force, I will still never, ever, ever call as a constitutional libertarian. I will never, ever, ever support any mandates that an American has to train with firearms. Because one, that would be very hypocritical for me as someone that makes a living that way. But two, it's about the rope of freedom. You've got to give an American, say, hey, man, I really recommend you go get training, but you can carry that gun. But understand if you shoot the wrong person, I'm going to be sitting on the jury and I'm going to hold you accountable for what you did. Well, the same thing applies to leftly, less lethal technologies. If you bought it because you didn't, you didn't have to go through the 44 73 process and you

thought the marketing was really cool and you use it either incorrectly or in a way that it wasn't intended or at a incorrect level of force, you either become a criminal or you could get seriously hurt. And I always, I call it, it's tantamount to the captain of the Titanic waking up, having his coffee, seeing that iceberg, just catching it a couple seconds before it was too late, yanking the wheel to the right and going, man, that was close. You know what? Turn the boat around and let's do that again. And every day people in this country, they put that gun on, they put that OC on, they put these 12 gauge rounds we're going to talk about on their person or in their defensive arsenal and every day that a bad guy the iceberg doesn't come close to them all is well but one

day that iceberg is going to get in their way and instead of going right to get around it they're going to go left and they're going to hit that thing head on and that could be a court case that could be incarceration that could be huge lawsuits or it could be them getting killed or hurt because they didn't do it right and so um yeah this this did spark an interesting a discussion over text between the two of us because it immediately it's the the the industry will take your money and i have to i can't beat up on bernard we're going to get into it i can't beat up on bernard i can give you i'll give you lots of different products that are out there. I don't think their marketing department is knowingly marketing it incorrectly.

I don't even know if the designers, the routes that work for them are knowingly marketing that correctly because they can be used appropriately. But the way that the end user appears to be grasping them is setting themselves up for failure. And so this, I think, is a great time to, you know, kind of get into what you can, what you can't. And being 2024, lots of cool technologies coming out there. You got to be very, very careful because you might spend your hard-earned money on it and it might be nothing but a force multiplier to your own incarceration. And that's what i want to avoid

yeah and that's the thing is like i'm reading through the comments right now uh on that page never read the comment oh man it's i i i went down that rabbit hole after you said something and it's i found at least a good three or four just on the first couple pages uh that are this is going under my self-defense uh my self-defense rotation i'm putting this in my shotgun for self-defense and great self-defense option and i'm like man i mean so let's get into that let's get into like the less lethal in a self-defense situation like when you can and cannot deploy less lethal before you start that though can i just take the briefest moment to thank you know jesus christ stoner john browning and all the saints of gundam that we now call it

less lethal and not non-lethal which is like one of the greatest misnomers in this arena i've ever heard my life and like yeah you know you've told us before but like anything that comes out of the barrel of a firearm it's not not lethal it's less lethal i just want to take a moment to like point that out there there that's done by intention but that wasn't always the way oh we're gonna go even we're gonna go further i'm glad you said that because you kind of set me up for where i was heading and that's to get into the the definitions of of non versus less lethal, that's very, very important to start things out. So it's very common, and it's the uneducated gun person versus the gun-do, right? The person that knows, like all of us.

Someone says, I've got to get a Glock. What kind of Glock? I want a Ruger Glock. Well, we know Glock is a brand. It's a model. But we hear somebody say, I've just got to get a G. But we hear somebody say, I just got to get a Glock. They might be meaning, I got a pistol. Well, you'll hear somebody say, I got pepper spray, I got a nonlethal weapon.

We know what they mean. They've got something that's not supposed to kill somebody, right? It's supposed to be used at what we call the intermediate level of force. And so I'm going to go on Michigan law, force. And so I'm going to, I'm going to go on Michigan law. And then there will be some different and very similar definitions for the state that whatever listener is listening to. So the levels of force that we have as a civilian and a law enforcement officer, very, very important. These are the same levels of force that we can encounter. The first one is no force. The first one is no force. This is where we deal with what we call from a force continuum point of view,

when we're dealing with a subject, and I mean subject, not a bad guy, but an opponent, a use of force opponent, someone that you meet that you don't know. Generally, when I'm dealing with someone at the no force level, I say, good morning. They respond with good morning. We never see each other again. They don't try to hurt me. I ask, Hey, can I get by to grab those crackers off the bottom shelf? And they're like, Oh my gosh, I'm in your way. I apologize. That's, that's it. That's no force. That's 99.99% of the time. And the people thank God that we deal with unless you're of course in

Baltimore, Seattle, Denver, or just any of the big cities where they're all burning down right now. The next level that we have is what we have, an intermediate force. Intermediate force. Now, this is a little different because for us as civilians, we deal with, this is hands, feet, and intermediate force tools. And that's the pepper sprays, that is the, let's see, the tasers and things like that. I'll get a little bit more into it.

So intermediate force for us as civilians can only be used against assaultive people, people that are trying to hurt us, not kill us. And that's very important. Now, intermediate force, hands, feet, and less than lethal technologies are intermediate force tools by law, excuse me, by law enforcement can be used at three different use of force levels and higher. And they can be used at a passive resistant person, meaning they're ignoring me. It can be used against an active resistant person, meaning they're ignoring me. It can be used against an active resistant person, meaning they're looking me in the eyes and they're just not doing what I'm asking them to do or an assaulted person. Now, for most law enforcement officers, they're not going to just go unless you're that Berkeley cop that watered all the hippies, that one that made memes for years.

cop that watered all the hippies that one uh that made memes for years um and then there's more to that story but most cops don't just walk up and hose down somebody in oc or pepper spray because they're ignoring them you know generally they'll get in their face as in bend down next to him go sir ma'am i need you to move listen if you don't move i'm gonna have to grab you and i have to move you and then of course they get assaulted that's when things start to happen but i won't spend too much time here but i only say this because there's a very common misconception in the united states that cops are killing people like it's going out of style and the reality is cops can only use force aside from dealing with that ignoring past resistant person the big talker the active resistant resistant person, where we as civilians, I can't, if someone's ignoring me, I can't punch them. I can't kick

them. I can't pepper spray them as much as I want to because they're driving me crazy and they're no way and they won't get out of my way. And the big talking guy at the bar that's just throwing his hands up saying, what are you going to do about it? Well, as a civilian, I go, what am I going to do about it? I got to walk away. And He's not assaultive. He's just trying to goat me into getting into mutual combat. So law enforcement officers, they can't kill somebody, use lethal force until we as civilians can use lethal force. And that's serious bodily harm and or death of themselves or innocent life, period, dot, the end. But cops do have this different ability to use hands-on

intermediate force at lower levels than we can. The reason why? Because when someone is sitting on my front step and they won't leave, I have to call them to trespass this person. And if they don't listen to law enforcement, they get trespassed, they don't leave, they get yanked off my front step, put in the back of the squad car in handcuffs, but I can't just punch the dude for being on my front step as much as it drives me crazy. So the next level that we have other than intermediate force, which is where we're going to talk about these less lethal tools is we have what's called non-deadly force. And this is a, this is a Michigan specific term. Your state will have it. And I'll, I can really make it easy for you. If you've ever seen a cop on a felony stop, their guns are drawn.

They're pointing it at a human being. They are not shooting that person, but they are ready to shoot that person. Law enforcement do, and by Michigan definition called non-deadly force, which is the lawful presentation, but not the utilization of a deadly weapon. It's called non-deadly force in the state of Michigan. It's case law. Every state's got it because otherwise cops would be brandishing their guns. Brandishing is the wild and unlawful wielding of a firearm around other people.

In Michigan, they used to try to get people that would hold somebody at gunpoint for brandishing. Well, now, luckily, there's a lawful delineation between it's the lawful presentation. And here's what it means. It means that I see somebody on top of another guy all of a sudden pull out a knife. And I know clearly in this we get into intervening other people's problems. There's some big things to watch out for. But I know the totality of circumstances. There's an innocent person getting the crap pummeled out of them.

And the person that's the bad guy clearly on top of them pulls out a knife. I'm a concealed carry holder. I decided if I don't draw my gun to shoot that person, they're going to stab that innocent person to death. As I clear kydex and pointed at them, they beat me to drop their knife as I'm adding trigger pressure. Well, now they have lost, they've lost the lethal weapon, but they're in proximity to the lethal weapon. And a reasonable prudent person, based on the reasonable person standard, what would a reasonable prudent person have done if placed in the defendant's shoes, knowing what the person knew at the time? Well, if I put my gun away and this person was just about to stab an innocent life, a reasonable prudent person would believe that if I put my gun away, he's going to grab the knife and stab this innocent person.

But he doesn't have the knife anymore and he's not attempting to stab this innocent person. So I can't shoot him. So I'm stuck in this very interesting, very narrow space in the use of force continuum called non-deadly force. If you as a civilian are finding yourself using non-deadly force lawfully you need to leave wherever you are cops do it all the time when they do a felony stop because what would a reasonable prudent officer have done if low light person was wanted vehicle matches description man they're gonna have that gun drawn because they believe and a reasonable person would believe that there's a lethal threat in that car. But that's why they don't draw down on you just for a traffic stop.

There's no reasonable person standard or officer standard to do that just at a nighttime traffic stop. So then, of course, the last one that, you know, guys like me make the bread and butter. If it's time to pull the trigger, it's lethal force. And that means serious bodily harm and or death. And that's why we go do a lot of force on force training to know when we can and can't do it. So it's kind of nice because it breaks it down. There's not, once you can categorize where somebody is at, it tells you everything that you can do. And then the job is you've got to know your tools. You have to know

the tools that are available to you. So with no force, it's my mouth. Talk to somebody. How are you doing? If I'm dealing with, as a civilian, someone and they're ignoring me or they're being a big talker, I just avoid them. I gain distance. I gain distance. And that way I can prove that if they're assaultive, they're going to close distance on me. So I just avoid those people.

They start to give me a problem, go get a manager, go call a cop, get away from them. That's all I got to do. But now we find ourselves face to face with someone that is assaulted. They're going to hurt us or they're hurting us right now. This is where the term non-lethal and less lethal has hit the market. And there's lots of tools out there that have been marketed for good people to defend against uh intermediate force threats or assaultive threats the common ones that are out there are chemical irritants such as oc which is pepper spray oleores and capsicum uh cs which is tear gas orthochlorobenzol nitrile and I'm only saying that to impress the listeners, and then CN,

which is mace, and I can't pronounce the chemical name. So OC, CN, CS, those are chemical irritants. They're in the state of Michigan. Aside from a very small little loophole, OC is going to be your only friend because CS and CN are pretty much a no-go for the most part, and I'll save us time on that explanation. And then we have controlled energy weapons. That's tasers. They like to change it. CEW or EMD, Electromuscular Disruption Weapons.

There are two types, tasers and stun guns. If you're listening to this and you have a stun gun, in the state of Michigan one, it's a felony to carry, don't. I won't get into legalities in the state of Michigan on tasers, but if you have a stun gun they're crap they only work on pain compliance you have to be with an arm's reach but you see all the made in china advertisements out there with like 1 billion volts doesn't

matter it hurts sounds scary uh yeah if you had somebody in the right in the back of the neck you might be able to make them do the electric boogie. But the problem is once those things are no longer touching somebody, they stop working. And then, of course, tasers. Tasers are very expensive, great technology when they work. I even heard from one of the Leos at SHOT Show that they have a new model that's going to be a 10-shot taser. That's cool. And it evidently shoots one little barb per shot. So you can link a circuit of like nine bad guys with 10 rounds, which is pretty damn awesome. But they're usually

$50 plus a shot. They're really cool. They have limited, uh, effective, uh, the cartridges are, are they fail a lot. Uh, that's why when you see Leo's use them one, there's usually more than one Leo and they've got what's called lethal backup, meaning if this taser doesn't work, I got another guy with a gun in case the guy goes lethal. But they're really cool technologies, right? Those are the two bread

and butter, meat and potatoes families. But the neat thing with technology and where this conversation has struck up is other things are starting to appear. And I'll call Berna out, And frankly, I would talk to Berna about this, and I'm not dogging them because I believe their stuff works. And that's very, very important to note. It's just the lack of understanding of what people are buying that I think is the catch. So there's a company

called Berna, one of the companies out there that are starting to make what I call atypical less lethals. And so, as we mentioned, non-lethal needs to get out of our, it needs to go away. It is just like clip versus magazine. People in the know, it just makes their teeth grind when they hear non-lethal where you will hear non-lethal is nlta that is non-lethal training ammunition truth be told it ain't non-lethal because if you shoot somebody not wearing protective gear

uh it could definitely hurt somebody but i like the fact that they call it non-lethal training ammo meaning if you're in a properly established training area and you have the sterile training area combined with the proper training weapons, these rounds, if the people that are involved are not force-on-force classes, we use called UTM or FX or spear force-on-force law enforcement. It's a big deal. And if you heard, won't go too far off a tangent, the ATF just banned all civilian use importation of NLTA training ammunition. Yeah, that's a whole other topic for me to lose my mind about but yeah um it's important i think what do you call non-lethal nlta non-lethal versus lethal real firearms ammunition but what we've done for the intermediate force tools is the approved and appropriate term is less lethal and as phil pointed out it doesn't mean non-lethal it means that it's not supposed

to kill you but it sure as hell could kill you. It absolutely could. Generally, if it's not used as intended, but sometimes even when used as intended, it could still cause death. And so good old American lawyers have made sure it's not non, it's less. To give the listeners out there kind of a fun bit of info, To give the listeners out there kind of a fun bit of info, the Israelis have a very big change in definition of less lethals. A Ruger 10-22 is a less lethal weapon, as in they shoot rioters in the legs with 22s. Jeez. Right? Now, don't try that in the United States. The Swiss that are responsible for one of my favorite less than lethal tools, the JPX projector or the Python JPX projector.

The Swiss consider less lethal to mean less lethal than rifle fire. Well, that's my handgun. So I don't like that definition either. But they have a whole different use of force continuum overseas in Europe and other countries. But for the United States, the United States, it's less lethal, meaning it is designed to be used against assaultive threats existing in the intermediate force realm, force realm, meaning someone is trying to use their hands and feet to damage you, but not cause serious bodily harm and or death. And so what you can do is use these tools. Generally, they are what we call artificial reach, meaning they extend the reach of my hands and feet. So I don't have to get into a self-defense and a hand fight. I can hose somebody down six feet away with pepper spray.

I can hit them with taser barbs 15 feet away. And I don't have to put myself in jeopardy because if anybody has watched UFC, there are many stories of the guy that was supposed to win gets hit with one lucky punch or kick and it's all over. So when you're within arm's reach of somebody, doesn't matter how good you are, you run risk of getting your your clock run so this leads us and i apologize for for spinning that up but that's that's the important stuff that needs to be known before you get into these cool nerf footballs and things that are very like it. Berna is just going to kind of take the brunt of this discussion. So the big thing about what every American needs to know that is not an active on-duty law enforcement officer

is that if it is shooty, stabby, or bludgeoning, so if it shoots something with explosives, if it has a sharp edge on it, or if it is designed to have weight to be swung with the human body giving it kinetic energy, those are not less lethal tools. Period. Dot. The end. Now, the danger is freedom. That's also the benefit. And I'll give you a great example. In the state of Michigan, you can own,

it was actually funny, a conversation with the MDFI alumni came up. You can own blackjacks and saps and collapsible batons and shurikens and ninja stars and all these crazy, you can have the cold steel catalog in your home can't carry

them outside your house or off your property so if you want to walk around your property with like 12 ninja stars rock on uh in indiana when i teach down there you can have collapsible batons those are the asp batons that you see law enforcement officers less and less carry. If you actually notice, Leos are not carrying these things much because we have as a culture, we see law enforcement have those on their belts. And when do we see them using it? When they have a violent attacking subject they're trying to subdue to take into custody. We see videos of the officers that are swinging these collapsible batons. Well, the problem is, okay, I can buy it. Indiana says I can carry it.

When it's in the hands of a civilian, it is a lethal weapon. It can crush bone. It can crush skulls. It can kill. If you see the training program that Leos have to go through the target for those when they strike the body the head the back and the chest are completely red you are not allowed to strike because you can kill somebody with those kinetic weapons they're designed to do great pain and livable damage to the arms and the legs but it's very well known that they've broken arms,

they've broken legs. And when someone accidentally, as the report was written, get their head in the way, they get a crushed skull and they die. And so a lot of law enforcement officers and departments have gone away from those because of the liability from lawsuit of not trying to do too much force, but accidentally through the use of the baton, do too much force but accidentally through the the use of the baton uh doing too much force and actually uh maiming and killing people right so um if it's shooting stabby or bludgeoning saps blackjaps clap blackjacks collapse batons um those are no-go and i'm always terrified when i hear that someone's teaching a civilian blackjack class well if i can carry a blackjack or a sap which are lead filled or weight-filled leather sacks that i you've seen the movies they're like get in the car see and

they smack him upside the back of the head the guy goes out uh he didn't go to sleep he was knocked unconscious by this kinetic weapon that hit him in the back of the head uh yeah that that's not good um now there are cool when we get into improvised weapons and gun-free zones, like the Mean Gene Hot Tamale, it's the coolest coin purse. That's all I'm going to say. In air quotes. In air quotes, it's the coolest coin purse.

And when I have it on me, it is a coin purse. It's not a sap, not a blackjack. That is my coin purse. But if I was in a gun-free zone, and now I'm faced, and this is where it's going to lead us to me shutting up for at least five minutes. Now we get into a situation where I'm faced with a lethal threat. When I am faced with a lethal threat, anything at my disposal becomes good to use. And so if I am in a gun-free zone and I've got this walking stick that I built that has a

cue ball from a pool table with a three-inch bolt and 3,000-pound epoxy on the end of that walking stick, and man, I've had a limp all week before I went to that concert. And wouldn't you know it, the moment I got through security, I didn't have my limp anymore, but I had this cool walking stick. And all of a sudden, the guy opens fire in the crowd, and all I've got is got that walking stick. And man, wouldn't you know, that cue ball in the end makes a hell of a collapse or a extended baton with a skull crusher on it if i crush that dude's skull with it because he's facing new lethal force it's good to go it's absolutely good to go if i have pepper spray in a lighter and someone tries to kill me i can i can light that isopropanol or uh ethyl alcohol and a big stream of fiery pepper juice all over them and that's perfectly okay the matter and means become moot but now

now we have these cool technologies and let's go to the burner um it is a 12 gauge nerf little nerf football that doesn't use anything but a primer, but it's loaded into a 12-gauge shotgun, a real firearm that's shooting. And it is now fired out towards what is being marketed as an intermediate force threat. Here is the issue, is that I am not a specially certified law enforcement officer. I am not running a bright orange shotgun that says less lethal. I am not doing crowd control or riot control as my duties require me to do. And now I have a trespasser. And I come out of my house with a double barrel shotgun loaded with these rounds.

And I point said shotgun at trespasser. Now let's break this down in the elements of a crime. Trespassing is a crime. Generally civil infraction or misdemeanor. But in order for it to even be that, I have to be trespassed. Be trespassed by law enforcement, meaning they tell me I'm not supposed to be there and then I go there anyway. Well, that's when I get taken to custody. Most people, the moment they're trespassed, they leave, they never come back. But I encounter a property owner who points a shotgun at me. Now the property owner knows he's got these little Nerf footballs. It's just going to make me yelp if he shoots it at me. I was trespassing.

I didn't have harmful intent. I am a concealed carrier. I didn't see the no trespassing sign. And now someone is pointing a 12 gauge shotgun at me. The reasonable prudent person believes that imminent threat of serious bodily harm and or death there that trespasser who was by very definition breaking a crime becomes the victim of an assailant of lethal force draws fires and it is a good shoot and the problem is the stuff is marketed you can buy it and people don't know so what we have to do is we have to we have to spread the word and we have to understand that, okay, so I would say to Berna, there is only one time, one time for the average citizen that your product fits the legal bill. And that is for the family members that we have that have ever said to us, and we all have them, I want to defend my home, but I can never take a human life. I want to defend my home, but I can never take a human life.

Berna, you have created the best product because they can, especially in the state of Michigan. You're in my home. Intent to do serious bodily harm is there. All I need is ability and opportunity. Intent allows me to point my double barrel shotgun. You don't need to know that I've got burn up less lethal rounds in it. But if you decide to go lethal and give me the ability or opportunity that I need to pull the trigger on that person in my house, instead of me dropping them with slug or buckshot, they're going to Yelp. And the worst part is for that person, they have to hope that the Yelp changes their mind and they run out. Because if they just take that round and we've all seen people in riots,

take those beanbag rounds and they just get mad. But congratulations, Berna, according to constitutionally use of force, you have created around for the people that don't want to defend their home and kill a human being. But that's the, that's the problem. We have these,

these tools out there that they look good. They make a great magazine ad. They will sell like wildfire um but they're setting lots of those people that andrew talked about up for failure yeah i mean i was while y'all were talking i was looking at the website and trying to figure out like what exactly are we dealing with here and i saw the part where it said it's only powder powered by the primer no powder i'm digging into my reloading knowledge so you're talking about roughly the roughly the chemical propellant energy of about a half a grain of gunpowder in an average primer which is like 22 short level of pressure for a 22 caliber bullet pushing like a

40 grain you know 40 grain 22 caliber bullet upsize that to 12 gauge and i'm assuming the projectile is made of plastic i mean basically this is just shooting the world's ugliest nerf dart at somebody yeah and and and i will give uh so i don't want to call burnout too much any if you go to cabela's if you go to bass pro shop uh even before this product came to market and i have i buy them every time i see them to use as as uh um visual aids in my classes you can get rubber buck shots rubber slugs a lot of times they're marked animal control um yeah you know yet it's it's uh you don't have a permit for a nuisance deer for lethal rounds you have deer that keep getting in your vegetable

garden uh you want to step out back put one of these burner rounds or the all the other things you can buy cabela it'll spook the deer give them a little bruise they'll take off run and maybe go to somebody else's field um so they're not the first ones to do it and i i will give credit i have seen the videos of those shooting, and they are moving. Burna, when they first came to my knowledge as a product, I have done lots of testing on CO2-powered, semi-automatic pepper ball launchers, and all of them are crap, in my opinion, except for Burna. I put one up of me firing.

I bought a bright yellow one. if you're going to do a less lethal tool i always recommend skittle colors is what i like to call it that that scream it screams less lethal to any responding leos uh but i i bought a bright yellow it's eight shot semi-automatic uh pepper ball gun and i was i was very impressed when i read the design and even when i fired it the problem with all the other little co2 powered ones out there if you ever had a bb gun when you're growing up put the co2 thing in if you let that thing sit for 10 minutes the co2 would leak out and then your bbs would start to drop out every other model uh made in china crap that i have seen uh either they they the magazines will break the pepper balls, which now you're

inhaling pepper powder, or they leak out all the CO2 and you get absolutely anemic velocity. The Burna, it punctures the CO2 capsule the moment the trigger is pulled on the first shot. Very cool. And it does work. They do rock it out. They're very accurate for the distance that I saw. So I do have one. I show students that if you really need to have something, if you don't want to have a lethal weapon at home, OK, then the problem is pepper juice or pepper powder in your home where you're trying to breathe. So they offer this these kinetic rounds and they are like a solid plastic round. Now, I've seen videos of other guys that were dumber than me that volunteered to get shot with them i saw them put the rounds through a good

size sheet of plywood i saw grown men screaming in pain when they got hit with them and i'm sure they are not pleasant but i also think back to the days of old when i used to play paintball in the winter and i'd come home with these looking like I had been in a riot in a major city and I remember yelping but I didn't die and if I was mad chances are you would have just covered me in little bruises and I would have been really really mad so the problem is like you said co2 even a primer they are going to move but you are really hoping on pain compliance and now the burn of the benefit excuse me the benefit to the burna uh pepper ball launcher is it is not a firearm uh now in the state of michigan we get into some silly firearm definitions but in the majority of states

because it cannot fire a live round of ammunition you can fire that at someone in their intermediate force you can point it at somebody that looks like they're about to do or imminent and there's actually a father there's a video out there and i wish i had it uh his his ring doorbell system a uh mentally mentally disturbed individual walks right through his front door encounters his teenage daughter who screams and then immediately goes running out because the father's got a bright orange burna and is basically challenging the guy at pepper point saying hey get out of here the safety's off and if that dude had taken one step towards him he could have it was not a trespasser it was someone that imminent anyone would have believed uh would

have been an imminent assault and he could have stitched that dude up with pepper rounds or or the the ballistic rounds but you would have to hope that the guy's motivation gets changed but the moment berna says load this in my shotgun i am in a either world of legal hurt or you grossly restricted when i can actually use that damn thing and that's uh what i would suggest to burn up is make it not 12 gauge if they really want to go through with it don't make it 20 gauge don't make it 410 make it some sort of of gauge that doesn't exist in a live fire realm and make a special pump action less lethal launcher and i can say shotgun a special rif action, less lethal launcher. And I can say shotgun, a special rifle, less lethal launcher, and you'll sell the hell out of it. And then to me, I can say, all right, I still don't think it's the best idea

because you're sure as hell not going to conceal and carry the thing. But now it's not a real firearm. And now people are out of, you know, that danger. And they can make the thing fluorescent red. That would make me even happier. Yeah, my biggest thing, make the thing fluorescent red. That would make me even happier. Yeah. My biggest thing, my biggest thing with this.

And then, I mean, honestly, I, my biggest thing, uh, against less lethal is especially if you don't have a lethal backup. I mean,

if you're carrying less lethal, like, I mean, oh, I, uh, what was it? Um,

not Kim, uh, Kimber. Don't they, they make that little the little pistol ball launcher right yeah yeah pepper uh pepper yeah so i mean like that that that thing is you know you have that on you you have that maybe on one side or in the holster that you can get with it uh but then i mean i just my biggest thing is the less lethal it that it implies less lethal so like what you said track is you're hoping that if you pepper spray somebody if you

hit somebody with the pepper balls if you know you actually use the you use for some reason somebody kicks in your door and you were like well i'm gonna use my less lethal round and you were like, well, I'm going to use my last lethal round and you shoot them. And then the guy behind them, you know, and you have that, it's like, nah, I'm going to have my, the power, the power of gray skull in my hand. And, uh, it's, it's going to go down because if they kick in your door, if you've got somebody that's going and coming into your house, entering your home, they're, they're showing some kind of intent. And I'd rather have the option, the right option in my hand to begin with than less lethal. But that's just me. Yeah, so you bring up a good point.

I'll speak from two different, we have two different ways to look at it, home and out, home and out. When I first met my beautiful better half, Allison, she lived with her sister in a duplex condo near Novi, Michigan. And when we first moved in together, she had told me about how one day in the summer her and her sister had left the screen door open. And usually it was locked or the screen door was closed, but the main door was open and they usually locked the screen door. And one day they'd forgotten they lived in this big condo community and in walked a very intense in the middle three 3 o'clock in the afternoon, in walked a very intoxicated woman who thought that they were in her house and was demanding, screaming that they get out.

And they could not get this woman out of the house. And she asked me, what would I do with it? What would I do with that situation? And I said, I would ask her once. And then she would be used as a battering ram through the screen door. I wouldn't have drawn my gun because I have to look at my side. You know, she said it was a smaller statue woman, but I have an inebriated person that's in my house, home invader. And now the law says, well, she has the intent to do me serious bodily harm or death.

OK, my trained self or my grown six foot two self says yeah you're giving me that legally but i'm not drawing my gun on her i'm just going to escort her using intermediate force because i'm absolutely allowed to protect my house uh in that manner and she's going to get out i'm going to slam the door and lock the door and call the police but so for home i never recommend that anybody uses less than lethal for home defense. That being said, because if someone's coming into my home, generally people that are breaking into a home know that there could be a homeowner in there. And what the hell is your plan for a homeowner? Well, they're there. They're probably going to do me serious bodily harm and or death to do whatever they're doing.

Otherwise, they would be a cat burglar and they would never come in when I was there because they would be watching for when I'm there and when I'm not. So, of course, I've got, you know, 800 square feet, 1,000 square feet worth of weapons, lethal weapons everywhere. Okay. But by our front door and by our back door is a four four, uh, launcher. And that's for, uh, me as the critical thinking human being going, all right, I grabbed the shotgun cause I heard the front door come flying open, but I encounter this very inebriated person. That's not demanding and get out of my house. That person's going to get to be a test case when I put down my shotgun and I'm going to hose them with 450 mile an hour OC and make them look like an Oompa Loompa. Right. Because I don't have to wait to pull the trigger. According to Michigan law, I can protect persons and property with intermediate force

chemical irritants. And so chances now I say this, chances are I'm probably going to physically, if it's a smaller statute person that I am not believing I'm going to get sucker punched and knocked out but at the same time what if they do have a knife on them do I want to get with an arm's reach versus I'm going to give them a verbal challenge and I'm going to hose them down 450 mile an hour pepper spray I might have to clean my wall afterwards there's going to be a perfect outline of where they were standing from the blast but they're going to get shut down they're going to go into respiratory distress and then it's going to be a perfect outline of where they were standing from the blast. But they're going to get shut down. They're going to go into respiratory distress.

And then it's going to allow me that if they have lethal intent, they're not going to be able to see me anymore, not going to be able to breathe. And if I change their motivation, they're going to shut the door behind them on the way out. For daily use, I always have a less lethal on me. If you see me in public, I have a less lethal. Now, I won't go too far in the rabbit hole, but there are three, I call them three tiers of less lethals. You have personal size. Everybody knows what those are.

Keychain pepper sprays. Little tiny things. They're good for one use and one use only. Duty size, which is like a law enforcement size duty belt pepper spray unit. And then you have a crew serves that's like the jpx4 that i keep it's it's huge i would not carry this thing around it's bright yellow and it looks like a q37 space modulator um if you know i tried to carry it around there's no way i could hide it i always have a personal size less lethal on me uh the current one i'm i'm fielding is a palm i like it very nondescript

uh i've done test test shots on them they have good distance for their size uh the formula is wicked just like any other formula i've ever been hit with uh and they're it is very nondescript got a cool colored ring so i could have a different color for allison's and a colored ring for mine so we don't get them mixed up uh just for if we're worried about expiration dates or use. And then in my go bag with me, the bag that all of us always have, I have a JPX projector that is the two-shot version about the size of a Glock 19. And I have a Raven concealment Vanguard holster for it that was custom made a while back. And why I have that is there are places that I may have to go as much as I try to avoid them that are quote unquote gun free zones. That right there in the state of Michigan is not a firearm.

It is a pepper spray. Well, now I have a pepper spray gun that goes 23 feet at 400 miles an hour. That's a hell of a lot better than my little palm. feet at 400 miles an hour, that's a hell of a lot better than my little palm. Now, what I will have with me is all of a sudden, man, I've got my Mean Gene Hot Tamale coin purse with me. I've got this walking stick that I made. I've got this whatever it is that I could never use against an intermediate force threat, but it sure as hell makes an improvised lethal defensive weapon if I had to. It's just not a firearm. So I always recommend carry less lethal, especially if you're dealing with an assaultive person, which the majority of Americans will have one type such

encounter in their life statistically. I might be able to stop it at the assaultive level, the intermediate force level. And if they choose to go to the lethal force level, they will be diminished in capacity. And that helps me out immensely. And then of course, we have to educate our friends and family and listeners. A lot of people believe that if you have a less lethal and you are carrying a lethal weapon, that you have to go from no force to less lethal force to lethal force. That's not true at all. If they go from zero to 100, skip it. Don't even worry about less than lethal.

You can go right to your gun. If I'm employing my less than lethal and all of a sudden I thought they were going to try to punch me and I see him go for a knife on the waistband, drop that less lethal like it's hot. Go to your gun. I see them go for a knife on their waistband, drop that less lethal. Like it's hot, go to your gun. You do not have to stick with what you had, but I love the fact that I don't have to go from hands and feet to gun. I like having, I've got six feet of range that if someone's even charging me and if I am paying attention to my environment, like the other night, oh my God, I stayed off the

strip in Vegas. I was put up by the Breach Bank Clear Crew. They were about a mile off the strip. It's some cool lodging. But once you walk off the strip, it gets pretty sketchy really quick. And I had my lethal blaster on me. But in my hand, safety off was my OC. I don't have to. Society doesn't. If you see a young lady walking to her car with a pepper spray in her hand, safety off was my OC. I don't have to.

Society doesn't. If you see a young lady walking to her car with a pepper spray in her hand, they don't call the SWAT team. It is considered by society a defensive weapon only. So granted, it's dark, but I have my OC ready to go in case somebody goes from me saying good evening and all of a sudden they go assaultive. I am already staged and ready to go and my lethal weapon is on my body as well but if i were to walk down the street with my j-frame in my hand that's a swat response because that is someone looking like they're getting ready to go offensive versus defensive and so that's we have to look at societal norms as well so yeah i'm

absolutely with you um there are people out there that are defending their home currently with less than lethal weapons. Make good life choices. I don't recommend it. If you're one of those people, and God bless you, and you're like, I am going to defend my home, but I don't want to take a human life. My suggestion for you is an 870, surefire, stream light, mod light, weapon light on that thing and load that tube with plus two extension and it's the most wicked beanbag rounds you can get because you need to crumple that person into a mess. You really have to because if they're motivated and that is the downside is that all less lethal tools do is stop an unmotivated person. They do not stop motivated people.

stop an unmotivated person. They do not stop motivated people. The goal of the less lethal is to turn them from motivated to unmotivated. And that's a very, very tough pill to swallow. So, you know, that and that's what I like guys like Special Forces and SWAT, they go through, that's what the suck is all about. That's why there's buds and they treat these guys like crap. They they kick the quit out of their bodies. If you encounter a bad guy and I have done after action investigations of security teams that have dealt with guys that were either on drugs or had that no quit attitude, you can hit them with whatever OC,

uh, less lethal you want. Yeah, they're diminished, but they are still in the fight. And so now you just have to embrace the little bit of the fact that they can't breathe as good as they used to and they can't see as well because now you got a dude that's in full rage mode and thank god he can't

see you all the time because you might need to make some uh movement choices sorry that's a lot yeah it's like it's something i'm. No, it's always fun. I mean, Phil and I, every time we have you on, you leave us thinking more and how can we improve our situation. And then how, I mean, just more thinking. You leave us thinking more, and that's a good thing. And I hope the people listening, I mean, I hope that it engages them and gets them thinking as well.

Yeah, you know, I've had the question asked. Okay, Trek, you can snap your fingers like Loki, and you can make the ultimate less lethal. You know, Taser, I love what Taser's doing. Their reliability, you know, it's a $50 shot, and 50% of the time in my testing it it doesn't work but their technology is great they had or they had a round for a specially made mossberg shotgun you can find them on gun broker they're bright yellow and black they only fire they only fire

the taser 12 gauge round and it was a it had like a capacitor in it. It would go up to about 100 feet when it hit somebody. It had the oomph of a of like a beanbag round. But then it would basically cover their their body with little monofilament electrical lines. And it would cook them for 30 seconds like a taser. But then you could be far, far away. It was very accurate. Well, at one hundred dollars a round police departments just weren't they just weren't having it and so it kind of went under but if you can

if a company can make something the size of a glock 19 that cannot fire a live round that is bright fluorescent yellow or orange that has these little tiny like a magazine of 15 rounds of air-fired darts that have a taser capacity of 30 seconds in it, the amount of lives that would be saved. And believe me, I'm not crying for bad guys that die. Sometimes they just deserve it to get shot with a lethal weapon. But if you think about all the people that go assaulted first, that if it's not a real gun and 30 feet away, a responsibly armed citizen using this less than lethal tool that is not a real firearm, not by not capable of firing a live round can stop that assault of threat 30 feet away.

And it's going to it's going to make them do the electric boogie on the ground for 30 seconds. Well, they grab their family and get to the car and get away. I mean, these are this will happen eventually and so i i will never tell people less lethals are bad but you've got to know one you should have a tool that you can afford to test fire you got to know how it's going to work um and and and you just got to know the legalities of what you are incorporating into your defensive carry bubble. And just a lot of people are like, Oh, shiny,

buy it. And that's, you can't just stop there. You've got to become a master of your pools. Just like we train with firearms. I mean that to me, that just echoes something that I've kind of pejoratively half jokingly told lots of people in the gun community for years,

which is, you know, like you go by your first Glock 19 or your first J frame and a box of ammo and go home and think it's a magic talisman against bad guys, and that's not the way any of this stuff works. It's a tool. You gotta know when to use the tool, how to employ the tool, where does the tool work, where does it not work, what to do if the tool fails, because everything that's mechanical will sooner or later.

Sure. I mean, everything we've talked about for the last hour and ten minutes, to me, just kind of like it dovetails really nicely back into the idea that if a less lethal tool is going to be in your toolbox, you have to know when it is and is not appropriate to employ that tool tactically and legally. You have to have some kind of idea of how to employ it so it works properly and does what it's supposed to do and you have to have some kind of confidence in it that it's gonna work and i hate to nothing gets burned i mean i've been i've been looking at the product page it's interesting technology but like you cannot put all of your faith into how good somebody's ad department is at depicting their stuff. Like, I think you're right, though, Tregg.

For that person out there that says, I could never drop the hammer on a living, breathing human being, this might be a good idea. Because at least, like, break it down in layman's terms, what I'm getting from you is that for the average homeowner, any situation they would employ this would also be a situation they probably employ lethal force. In other words, like there's a huge overlap between this and 12 gauge buckshot, and there's this tiny little sliver, you would use this and not a lethal round for an average homeowner. Yeah. With today's technology, I would recommend whatever gun you choose for home defense, yeah with today's technology i would recommend whatever gun you choose for home defense i won't get into the gun a gun versus b gun uh fight but uh get a crew served oc the bear spray get the big old 30 foot range giant bear spray that you can't hide anywhere bad day in a can put put velcro put velcro on one side of it i think they even have little carry cases and mount that carry case

right by your front door there's your less lethal option that's if you don't i mean if the situation doesn't call for lethal force 30 feet away you can literally coat a human being with 10 percent oc anyone that doesn't change their motivation at that point i would be very, very impressed. So, yeah, I mean, there are combos out there. And that's, I mean, if it wasn't for the JPX4 sitting by my back door, that I would have a can of either Riot-style OC or bear spray, which is just a pepper spray labeled for bears. I'd have that at the front and back door for a less than lethal option. But yeah, mounting things, firing it out of the shot, a shotgun, in my opinion, is only if you're falling into that category of the not willing to take a human life, want to defend your home.

Okay, rock on. very curious with this product i saw some common i still until proven would go with like law enforcement contract beanbag rounds ones that when you see the guys get hit in the riots they kind of crumple over like someone kicked them in the junk those would be uh the rounds that i would go with these um i'm gonna buy some i'm gonna test them out because that's what i do i spend my money so other people don't waste theirs uh in a very similar bit of info in a record number january 22nd my fingerprint cards got into the atf uh today they approved my over under short barrel shotgun project which very well may get spray painted bright orange with white stencils that still say very lethal on the side instead of less lethal so uh yeah just if you load it in a real gun right now unless you're a law enforcement officer i i would not unless you fit in that special category and that's just going to save you from all sorts

of legal trouble uh and especially geographical geographically speaking with everything that's going on in this country if you live in a blue state, hell no. Texas, they didn't even indict the Taqueria shooter. So I think it's just a free-for-all down in Texas. And we'll have to talk about that in another show. Yeah, interesting. No, everything, yeah, like I said, you come on and you leave us wanting more information, which is a good thing.

But no, let's recap, though. But first off, again, if you guys for Brian Terry Foundation, go to honorbryanterry.com, click donate. It only takes a couple of minutes. And yeah, if you can donate $1 or $5, whatever, it goes to a great cause. So I really appreciate anybody who does donate. Yeah. Thank you. But, but track for those of the people that don't know where to find you, where can, what's the, what are some ways they can get ahold of you? Yeah. So the website is train MDFI, train MDFI.com.

If you want to reach me directly, if you've got questions about the show, or if you want me to nerd out on Les Lethal, I mean, we can just have a phone call. If I'm bored, I'll call you up. We'll talk about it. It's trek at trainmdfi.com. That's my direct email. The company is info at trainmdfi.com.

Our season's starting up here this month. My team Thundercat, Tim Nelson, lead instructor and Brandon meet him. Uh, those guys are kicking off our indoor classes at barracks 616 and grand Rapids. I am getting back right about April fool's day. And then I start into our 2024 season. I think as of today, we're about 40% filled. Uh, it's so weird with the economy and politics.

You just never know how training season is going to go, but classes are filling quite well. So if you're interested in taking a class, jump on it sooner than later. And if you enjoyed this discussion, I'm really happy to see finally, after many years of our When a gun is not an option indoor seminar seminar class it's all about constitutional use of force show and tell of less than lethal tools we're starting to see those classes really fill and that's where i think uh because of the discussions that we've had on on this show so uh when a gun's not an option we've got them at not just guns

um in mason michigan mount pleasant black creek range we've got them at Not Just Guns in Mason, Michigan, Mount Pleasant at Black Creek Range. We've got a Barrick 616 in Grand Rapids. Definitely jump in. We'll nerd out and talk about how to defend you and yours when a gun's not an option. But, yeah, that's it. Northern Woods Training, that's northernwoodstraining.com. That is our non-live fire training. Like Freddie Asuna, we've got him coming in for an anti-tracking

and camo stalking class this year. Haven't heard back from Ed Calderon yet. I'm waiting on him to confirm his dates. We've got bushcraft classes and all sorts of stuff. And I'm happy to say that Spectacle Lake is no longer my baby, but it is in the hands of good people, and it has now been saved as a conservation club in the state of michigan so uh yeah i'm i'm one less hat this year and i'm okay with that yeah right um no yes if

anybody if anybody is interested in uh picking up any of those shares uh to support the brian terry foundation and uh soc uh if you i mean trek dropped his contact information if you cannot get a hold of him for some reason or you don't remember uh drop me a line go to the contact form on mofpodcast.com uh and i'll put you guys into contact with each other uh and then uh get that going but um but no trek thanks for uh thanks for coming on man i'm looking forward to when you and alice in their home uh since i didn't get to see you guys before you took off because work schedule and all that life crap and adulting, but I look forward to seeing you guys.

And, I'm in the shotgun class in Mount Pleasant, so that'll be fun. Yeah. I'm, uh, black Creek is our new home range and Jeff and Jeff and his guys are, uh,

definitely working on making it a hell of a training facility. And I'm looking forward to teaching there this next year. Awesome. Yeah. It looks like a really nice range. facility, and I'm looking forward to teaching there this next year. Awesome. Yeah, it looks like a really nice range. No, absolutely. Well, cool. Well, thanks for coming on, and, yeah, I got nothing else. I'll go ahead and punt this one out.

If you're interested in seeing and hearing more from TREC, trainMDFI.com. If you would like Andrew to be the test dummy for these burner connect rounds, I encourage you to go on social media and bully him until he volunteers to get shot by one of these things. Buy track. I see a Brian Terry Foundation fundraiser. Fundraising opportunity. And if you would like to contribute to my amateur welding operation,

I accept bulldozers and I accept cash. But you could always just enjoy more of the insanity by following the podcast so you don't miss an episode. And we'll talk to you all another week. Bye, everybody. See ya. Thank you.